The Last Week at Freddy's
by The Great Allie
Summary: A new engineer shows up with orders to fix and upgrade the animatronics at Freddy Fazbear's pizza, but Mike knows better. It's up to him to introduce her to the sinister secrets of the pizzeria, but as he lays them out for her, he becomes increasingly aware that there's still one big secret yet to be uncovered... if he can survive that long.
1. 1st Night

_This story may not jive with your headcanon, and it definitely dances along the line of truth as to what was presented in the game. It takes into account pretty much just what you find in the core five days of the first game and was mostly plotted out before the release of the third one entirely. Things from later games are only germane to this story if they're mentioned specifically. So if your response to a continuity error begins with, "But in FNaF2/FNaF3/Scott's totally legit post, it said..." please know that I am aware of it, had taken it into account, and discarded it to create this alternate scenario. At the very least, the story should be internally consistent with itself. I hope you enjoy it and it keeps you guessing. I also apologize if you don't like Sunny. I do personally, and will be giving her her own book later this year, but if you don't please PM me any punches in the face and I'll see that she gets them. Rest assured, though that this is Mike's story, not Sunny's and I will be treating it as such._

* * *

Another long, dreary night of staving off certain death.

Mondays are normally dreary, hateful days for the working world. But for Mike Schmidt, Mondays were the best day of the working week. On Mondays, the animatronics at Freddy Fazbear's were quiet and mostly inactive. Usually one of them didn't even leave the stage until after two or three in the morning. Not that Mike neglected to check the cameras, but if someone was going to try and get inside the office, it wouldn't be until late- or early, rather. Usually no one showed up at the door until after four.

Mike settled down in his chair promptly at midnight and picked up his monitor. As expected, Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica were onstage, and the curtain to Pirate Cove was drawn closed. Mike poured a cup of coffee from his thermos and took a drink. It was going to be a long, tense night.

"Midnight," said Mike, just to hear the sound of his own voice. "All accounted for."

Twelve fifteen...

Twelve thirty...

One AM...

Mike got up and stretched. Sitting too long at the monitor made him get really tense, and used up his power to boot. But he couldn't stay away for long, because not watching the cameras was sure death. When he picked it up again, he was startled to see that Bonnie was already moving around. It was standing in the dining area, looking at the camera from a distance. Mike checked the stage quickly, and Chica and Freddy were still in position. Nothing had changed at Pirate Cove.

"Stay right there," Mike instructed Bonnie, watching the camera. Then he had to put it down. One minute... five minutes... ten... he picked up the camera again. Bonnie had moved.

Was it in the hall? Nope, hall was clear. "Is he in the supply closet? ... No..." Mike frowned. He leaned over and pressed the door light, relieved to see that his blind spot was clear. Back to the camera, Mike checked the backstage area. Sure enough, there was Bonnie. Mike breathed a sigh of relief...

And sucked it right back in when he saw that Bonnie wasn't alone. There was someone else in there... _another human being_!

Mike blinked, thinking he was hallucinating again. But no. It was a human, standing front of Bonnie, running his or her or _its_ (it couldn't be another robot, could it?) hands all along the rabbit's coarse, plastic fur. Mike squinted to get a better look. It was very hard to see details in the dark.

Mike tensed, waiting for Bonnie to react, to grab the stranger and stuff it in one of the empty suits backstage. But as the seconds ticked by, he started to feel strange. Nothing was happening. The figure investigated Bonnie's ears, its face, its arms, its whole body... and Bonnie didn't move. Why? He knew the animatronics would attack, he'd had too many close calls. Not to mention what had happened to Porter.

Mike decided then to do something he had never done before: leave the office between the hours of twelve and six.

Deciding to leave and actually leaving were two different things. He checked his watch and the camera, and based on what he knew it was really unlikely that Chica or Freddy would move, and Foxy was still hiding behind the curtains. Mike took a deep breath and stepped out into the west hall. He was not immediately jumped and stuffed into a suit. So far, so good.

Mike slowly crept down the hall, each tap of his hard shoes against the tile echoing over and over, down the hall and throughout the pizzeria. Mike was certain that Freddy could hear him, devil that he was, and was already off the stage. Mike's monitor was still in the office, hooked up to the security system. If only he could bring it with him...

When he got to the end of the hall he realized that he would have to walk right past Pirate Cove in order to get backstage. His muscles tensed up at the thought, but the curtains were mercifully still closed. Foxy was as good as asleep.

The dining area was full of shadows that teased the edge of Mike's subconscious. _It's me!_ flashed through his head, and the image of an eyeless, soulless bear danced behind his eyes. A deep laughter tickled his ears, but Mike couldn't be sure if he was hearing it or remembering it. Mike squeezed his eyes shut and picked up the pace.

The door to the backstage opened and Mike dove under one of the party tables. It wasn't Bonnie that emerged, though. It was a woman. Mike could see her much better in person. She was young-ish, late twenties probably, with dark skin and long hair done in a loose braid- her back was turned to him as she closed the door, before turning around to give him a good view of her face.

Convinced they were alone, as the animatronics on stage were behind their own curtain and she had closed the door to the backstage, Mike slowly crawled out from under the table. "Who the hell are you?" he croaked.

The woman jumped in surprise and looked around. "Hello? Is someone here?" She spotted Mike as he straightened up.

"No one is supposed to be on the premises," said Mike. "I'm the security guard- you're going to have to leave."

"Me, leave?" The woman frowned. "No, sorry, I'm supposed to be here. I mean, they probably expected me to be here during the day, but my plane was late getting in. I'm the new engineer. My name is Sunny Deshawn."

"Mike Schmidt, the security guard," said Mike with a hand on his chest, "and no one mentioned this to me. Not that they ever tell me anything," he added bitterly. "Come on- we have to get back to the office, fast."

"Why?"

Mike reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Just come with me and I'll explain."

"Um, okay." Sunny allowed him to lead her back down the hall and to the office.

Somehow, Mike wasn't as tense or as aware of every little piece of his surroundings as he had been when he emerged. Immediately upon returning he picked up the monitor and checked everyone's position: Bonnie backstage, Freddy and Chica onstage, Pirate Cove still curtained off. He put the monitor down and breathed out slowly.

Calm again, Mike turned to Sunny, who was standing in the doorway. "Come all the way in," he instructed. She took a step into the room. "Okay, you wanna tell me from the beginning? What are you doing here?"

"I'm on loan from P.E.T.," she explained.

Mike cocked his head.

"Pizzaland Entertainment Theater," she clarified. "See, I got a job with them refurbishing their animatronics."

"I thought Pizzaland went out of business at the same time Showbiz did."

Sunny shook her head. "The main company did and got bought by a tech company in South America, but two or three of the franchises survived. And they still cook up guest stars every year. In fact, they let me borrow the old one to bring here to help."

Mike clutched the monitor close to his chest. "You brought one of those _things_ here?"

"He's currently in a secure offsite storage area, but yes. _Why_ are you so freaked out? Scared of the dark or something?"

Mike shook his head, almost violently. "Just keep talking!"

"O... kay. Well, anyway, P.E.T. keeps me around to keep the figures running and to program the shows, but it's not full-time work. When Fazbear's found out about how I'd revitalized P.E.T., they called me and asked if I couldn't help them refurbish their figures, maybe see if I could program out the quirks. I said I'd try," she finished.

Mike shook his head. "You can't," he said.

"Why? 'Cause I'm girl?" Obviously she was teasing him, but he ignored it.

"No, that's not it."

"Oh. Then it's because I'm black."

"It's because they're _evil_ ," Mike insisted.

"...Um, I don't think so."

"Trust me," said Mike. "I've been doing this job long enough."

"How long is that?"

Mike hesitated. "Six weeks," he admitted.

"Six weeks."

"Yeah." Mike suddenly looked self-conscious.

"And that makes you an expert." She clearly wasn't buying it.

"Not an expert," Mike said slowly, "but definitely the most senior security guard. And," he added glancing at the monitor, "unless I'm mistaken, the last security guard."

"You don't know?"

"They don't tell me anything."

Sunny leaned back against the window, her hands stuffed in her pockets. "That really sucks. I know what that's like- sometimes people don't tell me things, either..."

"I bet they tell you the important things."

"When I got out of college, I traveled halfway around the world for a job they forgot to tell me was under a hiring freeze."

"Yikes." Mike tried to give an appropriate reaction. He was, after all, not completely wrapped up in his own problems. "Still, though. You're alive."

" _You're_ alive," said Sunny.

"And I hope to stay that way. Look." Mike straightened his shoulders. "You're going to have to stay here overnight. It's not safe to leave the office before six." He picked up the monitor and flipped through the feed. "See? Bonnie's already moving again. He's back in the dining room."

"And... that's bad?"

"I don't know why he didn't do anything to you, especially given where you were, but when they see a person, they don't recognize him as a person. They sort of... see you as an endoskeleton without its suit on, so they stuff you in a suit. You know, the ones full of crossbeams and... sharp animatronic stuff."

"And that's bad."

"It would kill you."

"How do you know what they'll do if they never caught you?"

Mike pursed his lips together. Then he pushed a few buttons on the office phone and played a message.

"Hello, hello?" an amicable voice said from the phone. This was a friendly voice, a voice that only wanted what was best for you. The sound of this voice made Mike relax a bit. "Hey! Hey, wow, day four. I knew you could do it.

"Uh, hey, listen, I may not be around to send you a message tomorrow." There was a horrible banging sound coming from the phone. The voice coming out was still mostly calm as he stammered his way through the message. "It's-It's been a bad night here for me. Um, I'm kinda glad that I recorded my messages for you- ahem- uh, when I did.

The banging grew louder. "Uh, hey, do me a favor. Maybe sometime, uh, you could check inside those suits in the back room? I'm gonna to try to hold out until someone checks. Maybe it won't be so bad. Uh, I-I always wondered what was in all those empty heads back there."

A pretty music box rendition of the Toreador March started playing under the banging. Then there was an inhuman scream, and the call cut out.

Sunny just stood there staring at the phone long after the message ended.

Mike picked up the camera and scanned through the feed. "That was the previous night security guard. His name was Porter Graves. He had called me every single night my first week to help me out. It was his last week and he was passing his knowledge down. That was his fourth phone call. On my first Friday, I got this." Mike hit a button on the phone, and a horrible garbled noise came out. It didn't sound like phone garble- it sounded deliberate, purposeful. It sounded like something trying to communicate.

When the message cut out, Sunny closed her eyes and let out a long breath. "If you're so sure they're trying to kill you," she said slowly, "then how are you still alive?"

"I have fantastic survival instincts."

"See, I don't think that's true." Sunny gave him a half smirk. "If your survival instincts are so great, why do you keep coming back to a place that wants to kill you?"

"Point."

"And anyway, that's the kind of thing I'll be programming out," Sunny continued, now once again at ease. It was easy to relax when you didn't have to actively listen to someone being killed over the phone. "So I should get a good idea of what they're actually doing."

"Be my guest," said Mike. "Just don't use the camera too much. It eats up power. If we run out, we die."

Sunny picked up the camera and scrolled through the camera feed. "Do you have any paper and pens?"

Mike opened the desk drawers and pawed around until he found a pad of legal paper and some half-empty Bics. "Here. Go nuts."

Sunny put the camera down and began making notes. "Seriously though," she said casually, her eyes fixed on her paper. "Why _do_ you keep coming back?"

Mike hesitated. "Let's just say I really need the money." He glanced over her shoulder and saw what she was writing: _1:37. Bonnie, supply closet. Freddy, main stage._ "What about Chica?" he asked.

"What _about_ her?"

"Where is she?"

"Didn't see her."

"You didn't see her?!" Mike shouted way, way too loud. He turned to the east door and hit the light. It illuminated the hall, so they could see Chica staring at them through the window. Mike yelped and slammed the door button. "They can disable the cameras, and I think they can disable the doors if you don't watch them!"

"Jeeze, calm down," said Sunny.

"I don't think you understand how dangerous this is!" Mike was really frustrated at her obtuseness.

"If an employee really died on the job, why didn't they tell anyone?"

"Company policy," replied Mike. "They swept it under the rug like they always do."

Sunny shrugged. "It just doesn't seem very likely."

"I can't make you believe me," said Mike. "And I'm not going to try and force you to stay here. I'm just going to suggest, very strongly, that you listen to me."

Sunny just kept on scribbling on the legal pad.

One forty-five AM, Chica finally left and Mike let the door up.

Two AM...

Three AM...

"We're running low on power," said Mike at four AM. "We should have a little less than forty percent power left, and we're down to twenty-five."

"What does that mean?"

"It means if we aren't careful, we're going to get murdered by Freddy."

"Well, keep me posted." Sunny shuffled her notes around and continued to work.

Twenty percent...

Fifteen percent...

Five AM, fifteen percent, and Bonnie camped out front of the west door. Mike slammed the door and stared at the battery indicator, watching it drop.

"Maybe Bonnie isn't going to hurt us," said Sunny. "After all, he didn't do a thing when I was checking his joints. And I was right there with the animatronic skeletons and empty suits."

"He might not have noticed you," said Mike. "They're not aware of things exactly like we are. I mean, come on. Do I need to play the messages again?"

"No," said Sunny quickly. She put the papers back down and started writing again.

Mike bit his lip. Five... four... three... two... one percent...

The lights went out and the power generator groaned to a stop. The west door sprung open, but Bonnie was no longer outside of it. Sunny looked up curiously.

"Don't move," said Mike through his teeth.

The music box jingle from the phone began playing. Sunny glanced at Mike, whose face had gone very pale. She turned her head slowly to see what he was looking at, and nearly swallowed her tongue. Two glowing eyes flashed in the doorway, illuminating a row of jagged white teeth.

 _Toreador, en garde  
_ _Toreador, toreador!  
_ _Et songe bien, oui..._

Sunny slid down off her seat and hid under the table. Mike remained frozen.

The music cut off suddenly. Mike gasped. They heard the plodding steps of a heavy animatronic come closer, closer... and then arbitrarily it turned and went further and further away. Somewhere in the distance, the Westminster Chimes sounded.

"Six AM," whispered Mike.

Sunny slowly crawled out from under the desk.

"Do you believe me now?" asked Mike gravely.

Sunny nodded, trembling slightly. Even in the darkness, he could see the telltale imprint of terror on her face. It was the same one he saw in his reflection for nearly two months now.

"So you'll understand why I recommend you don't come back?"

Sunny gave him a look that was incredulous over fearful. "Are you kidding? If I'm going to fix them, I have to see them at their worst. I'll be back tonight."

"If you're sure," said Mike. "See you before midnight." Without another word, he grabbed his coat from the corner and left.


	2. 2nd Night

Mike honestly didn't expect Sunny to return. For all her bravado and disbelieving, she sure had gone cold when Freddy showed up. He half-expected to come in to find some half-assed apology scribbled on her legal paper saying she was heading back to G.T.E. or wherever it was she said she came from.

Nothing in the pizza place was different when Mike let himself in. The animatronics were standing still on the stage, giving him a chill. Mike ignored them and ducked quickly down the hall. He turned into his office and found himself face to face with a giant yellow fox.

Mike screamed.

"It's okay! It's okay!" Sunny jumped out in front of Mike and waved her hands apologetically. "This is mine! It's the one I brought with me from Pizzaland!"

Mike flopped down in his chair, suddenly out of breath from nearly having a heart attack. "What the hell is that thing?"

"Mike, meet Kit the nine-tailed fox. Kit, this is Mike. Kit is last year's special guest star. He used to be a peacock back in '88, and he was refurbished instead of building a new one from scratch."

"That explains why all his tails are welded together," Mike grumbled.

Kit was actually a pretty good animatronic. It had a pointed face and slanted felt strips representing permanently closed eyes. That was fine with Mike, as he was tired of soulless robot eyes staring at him. Kit's fur was clean and its joints were well hidden. It was more like an old Disneyland animatronic than a Fazbear's, although under close scrutiny like this you could tell it wasn't really up to scratch. Its nine tails fanned behind it just like a peacock's coverts.

"What does he do?" Mike asked suspiciously.

"Stands in the back of the restaurant on his own stage and cracks jokes," replied Sunny. "Kit, go outside and play with your new friends." She gave Kit a nudge, and it trudged out of the door and down the west hall. "Maybe he'll be a good influence on them."

"Maybe they'll be a bad influence on him," said Mike.

Sunny reached under the desk and pulled out a huge Macintosh PowerBook. Right away, Mike shook his head and waved his hands in an exaggerated gesture. "Noooope, nope nope nope. There is absolutely not enough power to run a freaking computer in here."

"It's got its own battery, genius," said Sunny. "It won't have any effect on your precious doors."

Mike sneered at her behind her back. Sunny sat down at the desk and began typing up her notes from the previous night. Mike sat down on the edge of the desk and began scanning the cameras. "Fair warning," said Mike, "but the animatronics get more active as the week progresses."

Sunny pursed her lips. The she hit backspace a few times and re-typed. "That's actually very helpful," she said. "I was wondering about a piece of the equation."

Sunny's laptop ran for three hours before the battery gave out, she saved her work, and shut it down. In that time Mike had closed the doors three times, twice on Bonnie and once on Chica.

"Did you see the one in Pirate Cove?" asked Mike. "Foxy the Pirate Fox?"

"I heard about him," said Sunny. "Isn't he shut down?"

"He can still move," Mike explained. "If you don't watch him enough, or too much, he comes down here. So far I've managed to slam the door on him, but I don't know what'll happen if I don't."

Sunny pulled out some fresh legal paper and continued writing. "Anything else you can tell me?"

"I'm sure I'll think of something."

"Whenever you do, let me know. This has all been insightful."

She worked quietly for a while. Then she looked up and said, "Hey, um, what do you do if you got to potty during the night?"

"I tough it out," replied Mike. "Once I used an old take-out cup and tossed it in the dumpster after my shift."

Sunny made a face. "Ew."

"Like I need you judging me. Why do you ask? You gotta go?"

"Yeah," said Sunny.

"Well, it's only three-thirty. You've got two and a half hours left."

Sunny crossed her legs and frowned. Then she picked up the camera and scanned.

"Freddy and Chica like to hang around the ladies room," warned Mike.

Sunny shrugged. "So I'll use the men's room."

"You can't use the men's room."

"Why not? There's no one else in there."

"It just ain't done."

Sunny un-crossed her legs and then re-crossed them the other way. She frowned and looked over Mike's shoulders at the camera.

"It's further away, anyway."

Sunny reached out and Mike handed her the monitor. She scanned the camera feed herself. "Bonnie's in the supply closet, and I can hear someone moving in the kitchen. Freddy's onstage... I'm gonna make a break for it."

"You'll be killed."

"If I die, I shall die with an empty bladder."

"Most people do."

Sunny frowned, as if thinking it over very hard. She scanned through the camera feed one more time, glanced at her old notes, then stood up. "Cover me." Without waiting another second, she darted out of the room.

Mike leaned his head out of the east door and watched her sprint down the corridor like a reverse Foxy. Then he picked up up the camera and watch her race through the dining room, then down the bathroom hall, past the empty women's restroom and into the men's room. "You brat," he grumbled.

He flipped back to the dining room and saw Chica standing among the tables. "Don't come out," he urged quietly. Then he leaned out the door and shouted down the hall, "Chica in the dining room!" Then he ducked back into the office and checked the camera to see if Chica had heard him. Apparently, she hadn't.

Suddenly realizing something, Mike flipped through the camera feed. What he was right about, was that he hadn't seen Kit since Sunny had sent him out. The only place in the building that Mike couldn't see was the kitchen, but he had doubts that the fox had been hanging out there for the past three hours. This did not bode well.

Mike put the camera down for as long as he could stand it. The longer he left it down, the more he dreaded picking it back up. He had a sick feeling that when he did, he would see a bloody, mangled corpse carelessly stuffed into a Fazbear suit.

SLAM!

The noise made Mike's heart skip a beat. He turned around as quickly as possible and saw Sunny standing with her back against the closed door. "I'm back," she said breathlessly. "Chica saw me."

"You went into the men's room after I specifically told you not to."

"I do what I want," replied Sunny. "Now I have discovered the secrets that all men have been trying to keep from us women."

"Have you seen Kit?" asked Mike.

"I haven't been looking," replied Sunny. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I haven't seen him on the cameras, and I'm a little worried about that."

Sunny frowned. "Well... He's here somewhere. He can't have gotten out of the building." Sunny leaned over and pushed the light button. The window was empty. "Nice." She pushed the door release, and with an extra loud _whoosh_ , the door retreated.

There was a corpse in the doorway.

Sunny shrieked. The startling sight, combined with Sunny's noise, caused Mike to cry out, too, and slam the door again.

"What is that?!" Sunny screamed.

"What's _what_?" Mike shouted.

Sunny pointed, still screaming, "That!"

Mike picked up the camera. Chica was back in the dining room. Freddy was onstage. "Open the door," he whispered, knowing Bonnie would never approach from the east.

Sunny took one giant step backwards. " _You_ open the door," she hissed through gritted teeth.

"You're the one that made this happen. You went to the bathroom."

"Sorry for not peeing in a cup," she shot back. "Anyway, aren't _you_ the security guard?"

Mike didn't have an answer for that, so he slowly reached out and pressed the button. The door opened back up.

Sunny put her hands to her mouth to keep from crying out again. Mike bit his lip hard.

Kit was strung up in the hallway. Its fur had been torn from his metal bones, the wiring veins stripped clean. In the dark, it looked like a mangled corpse. Kit's wires and cables had been used to bind its arms to its sides and to hang it from the ceiling by its neck. Its tails had been torn from its rear and ripped apart i to nine pieces strewn on the ground. Clearly the animatronics were even stronger than Mike had given them credit for.

"I think they don't like Kit," said Mike.

Sunny covered her eyes for a minute before looking again, as if that would make what she'd seen become untrue. "Fazbear Entertainment is paying for this," she said. "It was their suggestion to bring last year's guest star."

Mike leaned out into the hallway, and then grabbed Kit by the shoulders. The fragile wiring holding Kit up snapped with the slightest addition in pressure. "What are you doing?" asked Sunny. Mike didn't answer in words, but just dragged Kit into the office. Then he stepped into the hall and scooped up four of the tails. The other three were too far down the hall for his comfort.

"What are you doing to me?" he said. "This is the second time I've left the office during my shift, and it's because of you. Are you trying to kill me?"

Sunny took Kit and laid it down on the ground. Then she shook her head. "This changes everything," she said softly. "It doesn't make any sense."

It really didn't, Mike had to agree. They had attacked him and killed Porter, but that fit in with what Porter had told him. But Kit was clearly an animatronic with a suit on, and it had been torn apart. Not just ruined, but deliberately placed outside the door for them to find for maximum effect.

Mike sat down in the chair and leaned back. He ran a hand through his hair and looked down at Sunny, who was still examining Kit. "Did they tell you about the Bite of '87?"

"Yes," replied Sunny. "It was clearly an accident due to shoddy programming and poor animatronic design."

"Their version, probably," said Mike. "I'm glad they brought that up." He paused. "Did they tell you about the missing children incident?"

"They mentioned that there was such a thing," replied Sunny, "but it really has nothing to do with why I'm here. The characters are a red herring- it was just someone using one of their suits."

"It may have started that way," said Mike, "but... well, these things seem a lot more likely in the dark. Do you believe in ghost stories?"

"Of course I do," Sunny replied curtly. "How could someone deny that ghost stories exist?"

Mike rolled his eyes. "No, you ding dong. I mean, do you believe that the ghosts _featured_ in ghost stories exist?"

"Oh." Sunny rolled her head back on her neck. "Well, I don't _not_ believe in them. I've seen some pretty weird things in my life. But some of them are ridiculous. I guess it depends on the ghost story."

"Well, then, judge for yourself: You know how a man dressed in a Fazbear's suit gained the trust of the children and murdered them. That much was made public by the police. But their bodies were never found."

"If their bodies were never found, how do you know for sure they were murdered?"

"BUT," Mike said pointedly, "ever since then, people have complained about the animatronics. They started smelling like death, and their faces sometimes have blood and mucus coming out."

"You think that the children's bodies were stuffed into the suits?" Sunny frowned. "Wouldn't someone have found them by now?"

"My guess is that they were only hidden there temporarily until the killer could come back for them... but it was still long enough."

"Long enough for what?" Sunny's eyes suddenly opened wide. "Oh... I get it." She frowned. "But that doesn't explain why they went after Kit. And it _super_ doesn't explain why they didn't go after me. All it really does is give a theory as to why they only kill at night."

"I'm just saying-"

"It seems just as likely the animatronics were the actual killers and some random guy took the fall for it. Probably because he looked like a creepy child molester. He probably owned his own unmarked van full of free candy." She cocked her head. "Do _you_ believe it?"

"Sometimes," admitted Mike. "But other times it sounds ridiculous." He paused, thinking it over. Then he asked, "Do you think it sounds ridiculous?"

Sunny looked down at Kit. She ran her fingers slowly across its coarse, plastic fur. Then she looked up at Mike. "Let me put it this way: I'm not a hundred percent convinced it's _not_ true."

Mike realized it was past time to check the cameras. He went through the feed quickly. Freddy onstage, backstage empty, dining room empty, Pirate Cove curtained off, east hall empty, Bonnie in the closet, Chica in the west hall 4A, no sounds coming from the kitchen, bathroom-

A quick golden flash disappeared off the left side of the screen the second Mike looked at the bathroom camera. After the startle reflex subsided, Mike followed it into the dining room. A tall, golden shape disappeared into the shadows of the dining room. Mike shivered. He went back to camera 4A, and Chica was still standing there, staring off into space with her beak half open. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Kit still spread out on the ground in pieces, with Sunny lying down using his belly as a pillow.

Mike went back to looking at the dining room. He could see a vague shape just on the edge of absolute darkness, but when he blinked, it was gone. Mike put the camera down and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was not in the mood to start hallucinating again. When he checked the rooms again, nothing was out of the ordinary.

Mike managed the power carefully, and they didn't run out before his shift was over. As soon as the Westminster Chimes sounded in the distance, Sunny sat up. She looked down at Kit again, and then began to gather up some of the smaller pieces.

Mike stared at her, trying hard to ask her something, not completely sure what he wanted to know. Finally, as she started out the door, he said, "You'll be in again tonight?"

Sunny shot him a mischievous smile. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."


	3. 3rd Night

When Mike came again on Wednesday, he peered into the office from the east hall window to make sure nothing was in there to surprise him. There wasn't, so he stepped confidently into his office without any unpleasant surprises. The rest of Kit had been taken away sometime during the day. There was a note taped to his monitor, stating that they had hired a new engineer to look at the figures, and if he should see her, be assured she had clearance to be in there.

Mike crumpled up the note and threw it at the trash can. "They never tell me anything," he grumbled.

It was almost midnight when Sunny came barreling into the office with an armload of papers. "Sorry I'm late!" she panted. "I got held up."

"How so?'

"Uh, traffic?" Sunny offered.

Mike gave her a very pointed look.

"All right, I was sleeping in front of the TV."

"You _cannot_ be late," he said. "If they catch you, there is literally nothing I can do."

"Okay, mom." She dumped the papers on Mike's desk and began to sort them.

Mike peered over her shoulder. "What's all this?"

"Newspaper articles I got from the microfilm at the library," replied Sunny. "It's everything I could find about the Bite of '87 and the missing children incident."

"What are you doing?"

"Well, look at it this way: my job is to reprogram the animatronics, yeah?"

"Yeah, I guess. Is it?"

"Among other things. And if they really are haunted, then in order to reprogram them I have to pacify the savage ghosts possessing them."

"Okay."

"So I have to figure out what they're trying to tell us."

Mike shrugged and picked up the monitor. "Just don't expect too much."

"This is the restaurants last chance to stay open," said Sunny. "If I can't fix them, it's going out of business at the end of the fiscal year."

"That's a lot of responsibility for one person."

"It is, it really is." Sunny booted up her PowerBook and began typing furiously. She had a lot of things to work out before its battery died.

As he watched the cameras, Mike wondered about the animatronics. In the dark, surrounded by eerie sounds and creepy hallucinations, it was easy to believe that they were haunted by vengeful ghosts that only wanted to murder, to get back at the world that had wronged them so terribly. But there was also a big part of him, a more supernatural-skeptic part, that feared the animatronics themselves had a plan. That a vague part of them, in their primitive AI, knew exactly what they were doing and were doing it on purpose. And that they wouldn't stop until they had done it.

Freddy came offstage that night, and Mike had to watch the East hall carefully, as Freddy never showed up in his blind spot. He knew Freddy was more stealthy than the others, and suspected that he would be able to slip into the room without them noticing until it was too late. He'd certainly come close plenty of times. Mike shuddered. He heard an eerie laugh.

Sunny glanced up as she turned off her PowerBook. "Did you hear something?"

"Like what?"

"Like... a deep, throaty laugh."

"That's Freddy," said Mike.

"Oh."

The fan hummed in the background. The quiet buzz of the one light seemed deafening in the absence of all other sound. It still amazed Mike how quiet it could get in the building at night. Just when he thought the silence couldn't get any quieter, it did. He felt that it could hit absolute zero and just keep going down, laws of physics be damned.

Sunny leaned against the west wall and slid down to the ground, her feet flat down on the ground tucked up close. She sucked her lips in her mouth for a moment as she thought very hard about something. "Hey, Mike?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you ever check?"

Mike glanced at her. "Check? Check what?"

"The suits."

"For what?"

"For your friend."

Mike furrowed his brow. "What are you talking about?"

"That message you played for me the other night... your friend asked if you could check inside the heads for him, because he always wondered what was in there."

"Oh... _oh!_ " It clicked. Mike shook his head sadly. "I never could. I can't go there during the day and I can't leave the office at night."

"Sure you can," said Sunny. "You've done it before. Twice, now."

"Because of you," added Mike. "I never did anything even remotely stupid before you showed up."

"Yeah, I know, love does crazy things to you." She slung her arms over her knees.

Mike gave her an exasperated look.

"Seriously, though. Do you think it's still there?"

Mike tilted his head a little. "I... I don't think so," he said. "Management has to have found him by now."

"What if they don't know he's missing?" suggested Sunny. "Maybe they think he just split without telling anyone?"

"They're used to the animatronic's... _behavior,_ " said Mike. "If he didn't show up for his shift, they would have torn the restaurant apart- figuratively, I mean, maybe literally now that I think about it- to find the body so they could erase what happened before anyone found out."

"Didn't you say it was his last week?" asked Sunny. "Maybe they thought he just cut out a day early because he couldn't take it. I mean, if you had just one more night, how tempted would you be to just... skip it?"

Mike rubbed his chin. "Very," he admitted. "But they would have noticed the decomposing smell by now."

"Really? They would notice a new odor over the mucus-spilling reanimated corpses up there on stage?"

Mike stiffened. "Speaking of reanimated corpses..." He checked the door light. Chica was staring in the window. Mike closed the door. Sunny pushed the other door light. The hall was clear. Bonnie was in the supply closet and Freddy was in the ladies room.

"All right," said Mike, lowering the monitor. "Suppose you're right, and he's still back there. What do you want me to do about it?'

"Well, he asked you to check, didn't he?" offered Sunny. "If you really considered him a friend, you could at least check. It _was_ his last request, after all."

Mike cast his eyes downward. Sunny sort of moved her shoulders, stretching out her neck.

Then he looked up. "If we were to check, it would have to be on a Monday. There's no way we'll make it all the way backstage in one piece. All three of them are out."

"They don't move when you're watching," said Sunny. "All you have to do is make sure you're always watching."

"Yeah. That's totally possible." Mike gave her another pointed look.

"No, seriously." Sunny stood up and walked around to the other side of Mike. He turned around on the chair, tracking her. "If we walk back to back, and look left to right, we'll have the whole thing covered. Circle-Vision 360°."

"Circle-Vision 180° at best," said Mike. "Too dangerous. Out of the question."

"Fine. Then we'll go there during the day."

"And risk them seeing what we're doing when all those kids are around?"

"Between six and ten?"

"No guarantee they won't still kill us."

"You're being difficult."

"I'm being alive."

They both tried to stare each other down. After a moment, Sunny relented. She backed up and turned around, pressing her face against the window. Chica was still out there, leering in. Sunny put a hand against the thick glass. "Do me a favor," she said quietly.

"What?" asked Mike hesitantly.

"Maybe sometime, you could check inside those suits in the back room? I'm gonna try to hold out until someone checks. Maybe it won't be so bad. I always wondered what was in all those empty heads."

Somewhere in the distance, Freddy laughed.

"How do you remember all that?"

"It's been burned into my mind," she replied. "You don't forget what it sounds like when you hear someone die. You should know that."

He did. Mike checked the cameras. Bonnie hadn't moved. Freddy was in the kitchen. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "If we're going to do this, we have to do it right. Freddy always comes straight to the office. He just got into the kitchen, and he'll come down the east hall next. When Chica leaves, she'll wander away before coming back. If we stay on the west side, we won't have to worry about them unless Chica comes into the dining room. But our only hope with Bonnie is if he stays in the supply closet. And he's already been in there for a while. He stays put the shortest and he moves around fast when you're not looking. And if he's not in the closet, the only other places he'll be are the west hall, the dining room, and backstage. All places we will be. Not to mention, if one of them actually gets into the office while we're gone we'll have nowhere to go."

"So we move fast," said Sunny.

"It's not that simple."

"It never is."

Mike took a long, deep breath. "Okay," he said. He stood up. "It's now or never."

Sunny smiled, then walked behind him and locked her elbows around his. "Do you want to lead or should I?"

Mike faltered. "You do it," he said, "since this is your harebrained idea."

"Okay. Should we check the cameras one more time?"

"Yes." Mike reached one arm out, restrained by Sunny's arm link, and flipped through the cameras. Bonnie was miraculously still in the same place, which Mike had not expected. That was his last chance to back out. Freddy was in the kitchen, and Chica was out in the hall. Mike swallowed. "Let's go."

Sunny tugged on Mike's arm and they went out into the hall. Outside, his ears began ringing. Every miniscule noise sounded like plodding animatronic footsteps coming to kill them. Or worse, coming into the office and planting themselves there to wait for him and kill them upon his return. A sickening thought came to him, that if Freddy was waiting for them in the office when they got back, he would push Sunny into the room and run, go and lock himself in the closet for the remainder of the night while they murdered her. Maybe he'd get out of the pizzaria. What scared him wasn't that he thought of it. It was that he couldn't convince himself he wouldn't actually do it.

"Did you see that?" Sunny whispered.

"See what?" Mike whispered back.

Sunny looked over her shoulder for a second before turning back straight ahead. "... Nothing."

"No, what?"

"Well, for a second... that Fazbear poster looked strange."

"Strange like the wrong color, or strange like ripping its own head off?"

"You've seen it too, huh?"

"Sometimes."

They slowly crept down the hall, trying not to make any noise, though they knew the sound of their walking wouldn't draw the killers out. They both had to force every step, like moving through a wave of molasses. Every instinct both of them possessed was trying to force them to go back to the office, back to relative safety.

As if they were safer in the office than anywhere else in this hellhole. If anything, the office supplied the illusion of safety. A cocoon. A womb. Hiding under the blankets. Just because you weren't exposed didn't mean you were safe.

"It's me," whispered Sunny.

Mike's eyes widened. "You saw it, too?"

"Not exactly..."

A memory of words painted on the wall. A sign that shouldn't be. A soulless, eyeless monstrosity flashing before his eyes. Who was it? _It's me._

The legs of the tables and chairs made a dark, twisted forest of black trees stretch across the floor of the party room. The curtain to Pirate Cove was completely drawn. There was no way that the curtain should still be closed, Foxy should be peering out of it by now, if not standing outside pondering whether he should run down the hall.

No reason for him to be still hidden.

No reason for Bonnie to be in the supply closet.

And yet somehow, miraculously, they were. It was as if they were setting this up. Luring them out of the office, to close in for the kill. Or else they knew what he was going for and they wanted him to find it. But why?

It couldn't be that. They were just animatronics. They couldn't plan. They couldn't lay traps. They couldn't scheme. They were doing none of this on purpose.

Freddy laughed deeply. Were the ghosts angry with him? Were the animatronics? Did they understand what he'd done? What he was doing?

When they got to the closet, Sunny balked again. Her bravado flared up strongly but subsided quickly, Mike realized. Without a word, Mike turned around, swinging Sunny around with him, and opened the closet door. Sunny sidestepped around him, unlinking her arms in the process, and went into the room first. She let out a little gasp, but didn't jump or scream. She just moved aside and let Mike in, and closed the door.

When Mike saw it, he gasped, too. Normally backstage there were extra character heads and a bare endoskeleton. All of the heads: four Freddys, three Bonnies, and a Chica visible, were turned to stare at the door. Last time Mike checked, they were looking around in random directions as usual. Occasionally, when he flipped past quickly, he thought he saw them all looking at the camera, but they were always normal when he flipped back for a closer look.

"Well?" said Mike.

There was one costume in the corner, an empty Freddy Fazbear suit slumped over. Sunny inched closer to it on the balls of her feet, step, step, step. When she finally got there, she knelt down and looked into the head.

For a moment, it was silent.

Sunny laughed.

It was a big, strong belly laugh. She laughed, and she laughed, and she looked at Mike with this huge smile on her face, and she couldn't stop laughing. Mike squeezed his hands into fists, wondering if she had snapped. Was what she saw truly that horrible? Possibly he would lock her backstage for her own safety, if he could keep Bonnie from wandering in. Then he would go back to the office and spend the rest of the night alone.

He really didn't want to be alone.

Sunny was still laughing. Mike took a step backwards.

Sunny gestured Mike to come forward. Her face looked friendly enough, and Mike slowly stepped up to the suit. She pointed in the mouth, then turned around and bent over laughing.

Mike squatted down and looked into the head.

It was empty.

Suddenly, Mike started chuckling. He looked up at Sunny, who was looking down at him, and suddenly they were both laughing, laughing so hard they couldn't hear the restaurant, the humming emergency lights, the soft footsteps, the deep laughter. They sat on the ground back to back, laughing until their stomachs ached and their eyes were dry. Sunny lay down on her side, still laughing weakly, as Mike's tapered off into silence.

Without another word, they opened the door and walked back down to the office in full view. The restaurant was empty. The curtains were drawn. The doors to the office were open. Nothing was waiting for them.

Mike flopped down on the chair and checked the cameras. Inexplicably, Bonnie was backstage. Mike flipped past quickly so he couldn't be sure, but he didn't go back to check. He just flashed the lights in the east hall to check that it was clear.

"Of course, you were going to be right," said Sunny at last. "Even if he was there, he would have been long gone by now."

"I know," said Mike.

She glanced at him aside, and then turned away tucking a stray hair behind her ear. "Still... I'm glad we checked."

"Yeah." Mike grinned at the back of her head. "I'm glad we did, too."


	4. 4th Night

Mike wasn't surprised to see Sunny come in at ten minutes to midnight. He was already at the desk, already watching the cameras, and playing the messages saved on the answering machine.

"... Interestingly enough, Freddy himself doesn't come off stage very often. I heard he becomes a lot more active in the dark though, so, hey, I guess that's one more reason not to run out of power, right?"

 _Beep._

"...I'm not implying that they died," Porter stammered nervously. "That's not what I meant. Uh, anyway I better not take up too much of your time. Things start getting real tonight..."

 _Beep._

"Maybe sometime, uh, you could check inside those suits in the back room? ... I'm gonna to try to hold out until someone checks. Maybe it won't be so bad."

 _Beep._

Sunny sat down on the floor next to Mike. He pushed the button and played the final message: incomprehensible mechanical garbldygook. Then he buried his face in his arms on the desk.

Sunny took the camera and took over for him. "So, tell me about him."

Mike peeked up. "Nothin' to tell," he mumbled. "I never met the man." He laughed bitterly. "We never had a conversation. He never even told me his name. I had to looked it up in the company files, one night when I had some extra time..."

Sunny put her hand on Mike's foot in a gesture of comfort.

"Porter Graves," Mike continued. "Nobody knows who he was. Hell, I don't even know who he was. He died alone and scared in a small little office and no one will ever know."

Sunny wrinkled her nose. "Have you been drinking?"

Mike snorted. "Not like there's a rule against drinking before a shift in the manual. Oh, wait- there _is_ no manual."

"Mike, are you okay?"

He spun around and glared at her, eyes bugged out. "Am I okay? Of course I'm not okay! Every night I spend in this hellhole is killing me! And tonight, I think, oh, I only have one more night until the weekend, it won't be so bad. But it's tonight, and tomorrow night, and then only two nights off until I have to do it all over again. And again. And again!"

"So... why do you come back?" asked Sunny softly.

Mike stared at her, wide-eyed, as if the question had never dared occur to him. "Why... do... I...?" He squeezed his eyes shut. "Do you think it's that simple?"

"Mike..." She reached a hand out. Mike swatted it away.

"Do you even know why I'm here in the first place?"

"No. Please, Mike, tell me-"

Mike yanked open the top drawer and pulled out a wad of paper. They were Sunny's papers from the night before, the newspaper clippings. "It's this! It's always been this!"

"The kids?"

"What happened to them... I can't, I can't let anyone-" Mike cut himself off and just stared at the papers.

Sunny took the papers from him and put them on her lap. She did this with one eye on the camera feed. "Here, let me worry about them. You just... come on, Mike. Talk to me."

"No," said Mike.

"You'll feel better."

"No." He sat up, and looked longingly at the papers in her lap. "None of them deserved to die," he said.

Sunny closed the west door, but kept her attention on Mike. "Did you know any of them?"

"No," said Mike quietly. "They were strangers."

"Mike..."

Mike took the monitor away from Sunny. "I can't do this tonight," said Mike. "I'm sorry. I can't. Don't bring it up, I just... you have to understand, it always comes back to those kids. I can't let it, I can't let it again. You understand."

Sunny nodded. "I understand."

"Thank you." Mike turned around and gave the cameras his full attention.

Sunny frowned. Then she slowly leaned forward and gave Mike Schmidt a gentle kiss on the back of his head. He reached his hand up and touched the spot where she had touched him, but he didn't turn around. Then she opened the west door and left.

That got Mike's attention. He hit the light and saw her walking past the window, behind Bonnie. Mike closed the door right away, before the rabbit could get in. He then picked up the camera and watched her.

She walked down the hall, striding confidently, her shoulders back. Through the dining room, she passed Chica, whose head was turned away from her. Still, none of them reacted. Knowing where she was going, Mike switched to the stage camera. Freddy hadn't moved yet, surprisingly, and in a moment it was joined by Sunny.

Mike knew he shouldn't leave the camera running so long, but had to watch. Part of it was anticipation of trainwreck syndrome, knowing she was about to be killed made it too horrible to look away. But she wasn't going to be killed. Bonnie had refused to attack her on the first night, and on the second night Chica hadn't chased her back to the room. Now the only one left was Freddy.

Freddy didn't move. Sunny reached out slowly and rested her hand on his nose, and Freddy still didn't move. She glanced up at the camera and shrugged. Then she went back into the dining room, pulled out her computer, and booted it up.

 _Don't touch Freddy._

 _Leave before dark._

Over the next three hours, all of the animatronics tried to get into the room. Freddy came pretty close once or twice, but Mike was too quick for him. Once Foxy even got out of the curtain and ran down the hall, banging on the door the instant after Mike slammed it in his face. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that they were after him, and that he would be killed when they got him.

But Porter's warning made no sense. He said that they would see him as an endoskeleton without a costume. But really, if that had been true, wouldn't they have tried to stuff the actual endoskeleton backstage into a suit? No, that couldn't have been the reason.

Which meant that the animatronics were doing this deliberately. They were targeting humans like him and Porter.

Why Porter? And why not Sunny? What was so special about her? In desperation, Mike wondered if perhaps they simply couldn't see her. After all, her skin was dark and rendered her nearly invisible to the security cameras in such poor lighting. Could the animatronics eyes be any better? Did they have eyes at all, or did they move around with other sensors? And, come to think of it, if they only went after him because he was white, how could he be sure Porter's skin was as light as a second-generation German-American? For all Mike knew, Porter could have been even harder to see than Sunny. No need to assume everyone was white unless stated otherwise.

So again, why not Sunny? And why Porter? Mike squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as he tried not to think about it, but he couldn't stop. He had a sick feeling, like he already knew why. And that he could never leave here.

The next time he went to the dining room in the camera feed, he saw that Sunny had moved. Panicking slightly, he flipped through the camera feed, looking for her. Stage. Backstage. Kitchen. Closet. Hallway. Restrooms. Clear. Clear. Clear. Clear.

Suddenly, Mike realized he had missed something. He slowly flipped through everything, barely noticing the animatronics, until he got to the kitchen. As usual, there was no video feed. He heard some strange clanging noises, like he usually did when Chica was there, but this time he also heard some soft singing.

 _We've come so close  
_ _That's almost in sight  
_ _How can we leave  
_ _When it feels so right?_

 _Now that we've been this far  
_ _Let's think of a way to make it_

 _Now that we've come so far  
_ _I need one more night  
_ _One more night_

Mike smiled. For just a moment, he could believe it.

The chair Mike was sitting in was a swiveling office chair. Feeling a bit playful after his fit of despair, Mike put the monitor down and pushed off the desk, slowly rotating once, twice, four times total before he stopped himself by gripping the desk. He picked up the monitor and checked the cameras counterclockwise, starting from the east hall.

When he got to the west hall corner, he thought he saw something strange in the poster. Occasionally he thought it looked a bit funny, as he mentioned to Sunny the night before. But he never stayed on it long enough to be completely sure it looked different or if he was just imagining things. And, of course, whenever he looked back, it was gone. This time it looked like a close-up of Freddy's face, with bright golden fur and dark, empty eyes.

Mike squeezed his eyes shut and put the monitor down. He slowly turned his chair around as he opened his eyes, and found himself face to face with the soulless golden face from the poster.

A six foot tall Freddy with golden fur and empty eyes was standing in the office, staring down at Mike. Their eyes were locked. Mike could hear faint, ragged breathing.

"H-hello," Mike stammered.

The golden Freddy remained silent.

Mike closed his eyes.

He expected to be grabbed, to hear a deafening, inhuman scream. His whole body was tense. There was a roaring in his ears.

The door on Mike's right slammed shut. He felt his heart leap into his throat and his eyes popped open.

The visitor was gone. The office was empty. He reached over and turned on the door light. Bonnie was standing outside in the hall again.

It didn't make any sense.

Sunny came in a half an hour later with a huge pepperoni pizza, cut up into sixteen slices, and two cups of soda. "So anyway, I just realized we're in a restaurant." She plopped the pizza on the table. "I know that you're busy slamming doors this late in the week, but, you know, I just kind of realized that I'm not nearly as stuck here as you are, so I decided to make the most of it. And I just wanted you to know, if you need to pee, I'd be totally cool with excusing myself."

"Sunny, you're a delight," said Mike as he dug in. He had to wipe his hands after every bite to keep from greasing up the monitor, but it was worth it. "Isn't everything in the kitchen completely shut down? And I didn't notice any decrease in power."

"That's because the kitchen uses actual fire to do the cooking."

Mike choked on his slice. "You're kidding."

Sunny shrugged. "It explains a lot, doesn't it?"

"This is really good pizza," said Mike. "Fazbears uses top quality ingredients."

"The person putting them together didn't do too bad herself."

Mike looked up quickly. "No, of course not! I didn't mean-"

Sunny laughed. "When are you going to learn, Mike? I'm just busting your chops. I know we're not really dating."

"Uh..." Mike really didn't have a response to that.

The conversation died out, but Sunny didn't leave. Mike spent the next few hours watching the cameras and the power, closing the doors frequently. Still, he didn't feel tense for a Thursday. By the time they got to five AM with a staggering fifteen percent power left, Mike was feeling pretty good about almost everything. He'd even managed to convince himself that he hadn't come face to face with a giant yellow Fazbear.

He turned around and looked at Sunny. "How many nights are you going to be here?"

Sunny's mouth was full with the last, cold slice of pizza. She held up two fingers together as she finished chewing as quickly as she could, and swallowed. "One more night, at least."

* * *

 _The song "One More Night" originally appeared in the Canadian TV special "The Raccoons and the Lost Star." It was written by Kevin Gillis and performed by John Schneider and Dottie West._


	5. 5th Night

Since Mike knew Sunny, he had been doing things more dangerously, but he was panicking and hallucinating less. He felt less tense overall. And even looking at tonight, he didn't feel dread. Fridays are glorious, wonderful, optimistic days for the working world. But for Mike Schmidt, Fridays were the worst day of the working week. Yet he felt confident that he could handle this Friday, and every Friday that came after it.

Sunny waltzed in like she always did, completely impervious to the dangers that plagued Mike and made him miserable. "I won't bore you," she said. "I'll just let you do your thing. Let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks." Mike was looking at the camera. All three of them were off the stage, and somewhere in the building, Foxy was singing his pirate song.

True to her word, Sunny was quiet. Just the presence of another human was comforting. It could have been anyone, really. Mike just loved not being alone. Several times he felt he could have used a soda or something, but he just couldn't send her away. He couldn't be alone again.

Unfortunately, it was a bad night. Chica camped out at the door early on, draining the power. Freddy approached quickly and left the east hall corner so suddenly that Mike almost didn't get the door slammed on his face. And Bonnie moved around so much that Mike temporarily forgot about Foxy, causing the holy terror to come streaking down the west corridor. Mike slammed the door on his nose, and watched his power meter drain as Foxy banged on the door.

Three thirty, ten percent. Mike stared down at the monitor, not daring to believe it. "Sunny," he said, his voice hoarse.

"What?"

Mike gestured to her and pointed. She leaned over his shoulder, hands behind her back. She immediately saw. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"There's... there is no way," she said.

"No."

Sunny bit her lip.

He looked up at her. Somehow he wasn't afraid, but he wasn't thinking clearly. There was just no way.

They watched the power tick down slowly, nine, eight, seven, six...

"Well," said Sunny, "we could always... leave."

He looked up at her. "Leave?"

"Hole up in another room," she clarified. "Just... well, you know, get out of here. Leave."

He looked at the camera. "Where could we go?"

"Where are they?"

"West hallway, dining room, restrooms."

"Yeesh. Okay, so maybe... wait, I think I can work this out." Sunny grabbed one of her newspaper articles and flipped it over to the back, uncapped a pen, and began to sketch out a rough map of the pizzeria, including the locations of the animatronics.

"Okay, you said west hallway? So you can't go to the supply closet..."

"Or anywhere, because he's in the dining room."

"Freddy is, right?"

"Yeah. I just said."

"So, when the power goes out, what will he do?"

Mike paused. "Well, he's more active in the dark, so he always comes right here..."

"Riiight?"

"... through the west hall," finished Mike, suddenly realizing what she was getting at.

Sunny stared at him, one eyebrow up.

"Since you've been here," Mike said slowly, "I've been doing things... things I never thought I would. I don't know if it has anything to do with you or if I just needed someone else here to convince me I could."

"So?"

"So I'll do whatever I need to in order to... well, stay alive and not be alone."

They both looked down at the power indicator. 0%.

Sunny squeezed Mike's shoulder. Mike opened the top desk drawer and reached in, closing his hands around the one piece of emergency equipment he had on him.

The lights went out and the generator slowly grinded to a stop. The only light left was from the emergency light, and it was barely enough to see from.

"Wait for it," whispered Sunny. Mike stood up.

Mike heard heavy footsteps slowly plodding down the hallway.

"Wait for it," Sunny whispered again.

 _Toreador, en garde!  
_ _Toreador, toreador!_

"Wait for it..."

Mike tensed. He had no idea how long Freddy's song would go. Some nights it was long, other nights it was short, but every time this happened, he knew he only escaped death by a hair.

 _Et songe bien, oui  
_ _Songe en combattant_

"Wait for it..."

 _Qu'un œil noir te regarde  
_ _Et que l'amour t'att-_

At that moment, the emergency lights went out and they were both bathed in pitch black darkness. Mike yanked his hand out of the drawer and pulled out his prize: a flashlight. Immediately, he flicked it on. Freddy was slowly walking into the room.

"Run!" shrieked Sunny. She shoved Mike out the door and they tore away as fast as possible.

Mike shone the flashlight in front of them to make sure there was nothing to trip on. He heard Freddy's footsteps plodding behind him much, much quicker than normal. He turned his head back instinctively.

"Don't look, just run!" Sunny shouted. Mike turned to look in front, and saw Bonnie in the dining room. What's worse, Bonnie saw him.

Bonnie let out a quick, inhuman shriek and lunged at him, teeth gnashing. Mike turned around ran to the left, almost tripping over a stray chair. He didn't see where he was going until it was right in front of him. The kitchen was right there, and what's more, it was empty.

He shoved past the swinging door, Sunny on his heels. As soon as he was in he flicked the flashlight around. There was a rolling island right by the door, which he immediately pushed in front of the doorway. He dropped down to his belly and locked the wheels. Sunny was feeling around in the dark for something else heavy and movable, but there was nothing.

Mike braced himself against the island, but with the wheels locked it wasn't going anywhere. From the other side of the door, he felt Bonnie pushing on the door, trying to open it and follow him, but unable to force its way in. It pushed for a few seconds, but when it couldn't budge, it stopped. They heard its footsteps as it walked away.

Sunny hopped up and sat on the island. She slightly opened the door and peeked out. Bonnie was gone. She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well, now what?" asked Mike.

"How much battery you got in that thing?" Sunny asked back.

Mike rolled the flashlight over in his hands. "These are fresh," said Mike. "I always make sure they're still mostly full. They've got these indicators on the side that you can press on with your thumbs... anyway, they have hours and hours left on them. Definitely enough to last us until six, even if we don't turn the light off."

"Shine some light over here." Sunny rolled up her sleeve, revealing an analog watch. It was only four ten. "Well, we got time."

"Nothing's making you stay here, apparently," said Mike.

"Yeah, but I don't want to leave you here alone. You want some pizza?"

"Nah, but I'll make one if you're hungry."

"No. I was just asking."

"Well, what do you want to do, now that we don't have cameras to watch?"

Mike shook his head to clear his thoughts. "I just want to think."

"Wanna think out loud? I might be able to help."

"I just don't understand," Mike explained. "Why do they go after me, and not you?"

"I dunno," said Sunny. "Maybe they understand that you're the security guard."

"Why would they recognize me as such? And why would that make them attack?"

"In answer to your first question, because of your shirt. And in answer to your second question... because it turns out the animatronics were the killers."

"I don't think that's..." Mike trailed off, not certain exactly which word for "possible" was the most apt in this situation.

"Why do you work here, anyway?" asked Sunny.

"Why do you?"

"Because I am the queen of revitalizing pizza restaurants. How about you? What are you the queen of?"

"Queen of Freddy's at night," said Mike. " _King_. King of Freddy's at night."

"Nope, you already said it. You're the Queen."

"Sunny..."

"But on a more serious note..." Sunny reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of paper folded into quarters. "Mike," she said, "I think it's time for you to answer this question." She opened the papers and showed him- they were the newspaper clippings. "Why do you work here?"

Mike bit his bottom lip. He held the flashlight under his chin, like he was about to tell a campfire story. "Do you really wanna know?"

"Yes. Mike, talk to me. It's obviously eating you up inside. Working here is really messing you up."

"You don't know how messed up I already was."

"I have a pretty good guess."

"Well, it's not what you're thinking. It's not like I was involved in anything. I just... I mean, you have to understand, I didn't even know who the guy was. Not until his picture ended up all over the evening news, after they arrested him..."

Sunny's eyes widened a bit. "You saw him?"

Mike nodded. "I came for lunch. It's pretty empty during the school day... and, I mean, you had the pizza. It's good pizza."

"So... you saw him... do what, exactly?"

"Nothing. He was just hanging out. Like me. He had a cup of tokens, and he was just watching the stage. I thought it was weird, but hey, I was here too. Except I didn't even have any tokens, so I had even less of a reason to be here. I saw his picture a few weeks later, on the news, after he was arrested, and I thought, wow. I saw that guy. On the day he took his third victim."

"But that was a while ago... is that why you took the job here?"

"I mean, it didn't bug me back then. It seemed pretty weird. It wasn't really anything until a few months ago when I was out of work and looking for a job. I needed some cash fast, I have bills to pay and I need to eat... so I came here. All I had to do was show up with my birth certificate, photo ID, and social security card. They had me working that very night.

"You know what happened. Porter called me and told me everything he did on those phone messages, right up until he..."

That last sentence hung in the air. Sunny looked away.

"You want to do something," said Sunny.

"No one else is. I don't know, I feel like I have to do _something_ , because if I walk away from it it'll be like I'm letting it happen. Like I let it happen before."

"You didn't let it happen before. You didn't even know the guy."

"I know, but I still look at it, and I think, if only I had known..."

"But you didn't know," said Sunny. "You are not letting anything happen. Fazbear Entertainment is letting it happen. There's no shame in not being able to help. You need to just put your hands up and walk away."

"But then someone else will take the job, and what's going to happen to them? Nobody will call them! That's not the original tape in the answering machine, you know, they erased it. I made my own copy. I kept it here to... to remind me."

"Mike," said Sunny. She hopped down off the island and put her hands on his shoulders. "This isn't your fault."

"No, I know, but-"

"And if you walk away, it still won't be your fault."

"But I could do something!"

"What? What could you do?"

Mike balked. "I... I don't know. But _something_."

The moment was broken by a loud clanging sound, of a metal pan falling to the floor. Mike grabbed his flashlight and trained it on the ground, sweeping until he found the pan. Just on the edge of the light was a big chicken foot.

Feeling his stomach go cold, Mike slowly moved the beam of light up the legs, to the torso, and finally settled on the head. Chica was staring straight at them.

Mike coughed.

Chica pounced, letting out a shrill scream as she did so. Mike was frozen in place, completely unable to move. Not that there was anywhere to go, seeing as how they had blocked the door.

Sunny jumped in between the two of them and spread her arms out wide. "Move the island!" she shouted over Chica.

Her movement snapped Mike back to reality, and he kicked the wheel lock and shoved the island out of the way. At the same time, Chica stopped dead in her tracks in front of Sunny. Mike looked curiously at that for just a moment before pushing the kitchen door open.

The dining room wasn't any better. Bonnie was still out there, or out there again, and he lunged at Mike with the same horrible scream. Mike ran between the tables until he got to the backstage door. It was closed, but as Mike reached for the knob it flew open. Standing there, in the doorway, was the giant golden Freddy suit, still staring with hollow eyes, still breathing raggedly.

The golden Freddy did not scream, but it did reach out and grab Mike with surprisingly soft paws. It pulled him into the backstage area and slammed the door. Mike collapsed onto the ground, completely overwhelmed and confused by the sudden barrage of stimuli.

"Get up," said the golden Freddy in a surprisingly familiar, and very amicable, voice. "You're safe here for now."


	6. Nightmare Mode

Mike couldn't breathe. He was taking in big gulps of air, as much as his lungs would allow, and he still felt like he was drowning. His vision was clouding over, blocking out the faint glow of the emergency lights, and there was a dull roaring in his ears that was drowning out the ambient noise of the pizzeria. Inside his chest, his heart pounded so hard it felt about to burst.

The golden Freddy knelt down on the floor and picked Mike up, holding him in its arms. "Come on," it urged. "Slow down. Take slow, deep breaths. You're okay. You're safe."

 _You don't know that!_ Mike tried to say, but he couldn't get any words out. Why couldn't he breathe?

"Come on, breathe with me," said the golden Freddy. "In... one, two, three... out." Mike heard the whoosh of air against the face of the costume. "Again. In... one, two, three... out." As it spoke, it held Mike so his back was against the bear's stomach, and it rocked forward and backward very gently.

Mike struggled to hold the air in, tried his hardest to breathe in rhythm with the monster holding him. In, one, two, three. Out, one, two, three.

His vision stopped swimming. The clouds blocking his eyes dissipated. His heart slowed down. Slowly but surely, the panic subsided. The air reaching his lungs was enough to satisfy him.

"Are you okay now?" asked the golden Freddy.

Mike nodded. The costume let go.

Mike scooted to the other side of the room. He sat on the floor, his knees hugged to his chest, his back against the wall as he looked at the monster in front of him who had saved his life. It still looked eerie, with those dead eyes, but something about it made Mike want to trust it.

Finally, in a shaky voice, Mike asked, "Are you one of them?"

"No," it replied. It reached up and took the costume's head off. Underneath was the head of a man. He had pale skin with a sickly yellow tinge and scraggly, greasy hair that hung just above his shoulders. It looked black, or possibly a very, very dark brown. It was hard to tell in this light. He also had a sunken look about his face and neck, as if he had lost a great deal of weight in a short amount of time. "We haven't been introduced. My name is Porter."

Right away Mike felt the panic welling up inside him, but he was able to squash it down this time. "P-Porter?" he stammered. "Porter Graves?"

"Yeah, that's right," said the costumed man.

"Mike Schmidt," said Mike, with a hand on his chest. "I'm... I'm the security guard. The one you were calling."

Porter's eyebrows went up. "You? You're... you're still here?"

Mike nodded. "I kept the tapes," he said thickly, completely at a loss.

"Oh?" Clearly Porter didn't know what that meant.

"Why are you... um, I mean... what happened?"

"On my last night?" Porter laughed nervously. "Well, uh, y'see, they came for me. All four of 'em. They teamed up and crowded both doors."

"But how did you survive?"

Porter spread his arms out. "Because I had the costume. It confused them just long enough for me to slip away. Ever since then-"

"I saw you in the cameras!" Mike suddenly remembered Tuesday night, when Sunny had gone to the bathroom, and he had seen that golden figure disappear into the shadows. "How long have you been sneaking around here?"

"I never left," replied Porter. "Since my last day officially working, I've been coming back and gathering information."

"To do what?"

"To stop them, of course."

"I think they know that," said Mike. "I bet that's why they went after Kit. They knew someone was sneaking around who didn't belong, and I bet they knew it was yellow, but that you were Freddy and it _couldn't_ be Freddy. Or something like that."

"I really am sorry about that," said Porter. "I had no idea they were capable of violence against their own."

"Have you... been helping me this whole time?"

"Yes," said Porter.

"You came into the office last night."

"I heard you. I was worried. I couldn't understand what you were saying, but you sounded so upset."

"It was about you," said Mike. "I was upset about everybody who died."

Porter's brow furrowed. "You were really upset about me?"

"Yeah. This place is hell. You were the only one who actually reached out and helped me. I just hated feeling so... helpless."

"I did, too," said Porter. "That's why I keep coming back." He frowned as he gave Mike a good once-over. "So... you don't like feeling helpless? How would you like to help me end this once and for all?"

Mike pressed his back into the wall, as if he was trying to scoot away, but there wasn't anywhere to go. "What? Of course I would-" Suddenly he sprang to his feet so fast that Porter jumped backwards into the door. "SUNNY!" he shouted. "I forgot about Sunny!"

Porter got up and reached for the door. "You mean the engineer? Do you think they got her?"

"I don't know. They don't rush her like they do me but that doesn't have to mean they won't hurt her."

"You stay in here," said Porter. "Or- wait, here." He went over to the shelves on the north wall and pulled down one of the extra Freddy Fazbear heads. "Here. Put this on."

"Just the head?"

"All the suits here are filled with animatronic parts. The one I'm wearing is from the old location; it's just a costume." Porter noticed Mike's hesitation. "Don't worry. The head should be enough to trick them for short stretches. I don't think they can understand half-and-half like a human with a suit head."

"Okay..." Mike didn't seem sure. Still, he put it on. He didn't like the extreme tunnel vision that came with seeing out of two holes, but he did feel properly obscured with his face covered. He wasn't sure if this would actually conceal his identity or if he was playing like a child covering his face and thinking it made him invisible. Also, it was already hot and stuffy in the mask.

Porter opened the door and they both stepped out. Mike stopped just past the doorway and took a steadying breath. His hands were shaking The emergency lights here were still functioning, though he could still barely see. "Sunny?" he called. "Are you alive?"

"Over here," she called back.

Mike looked around. It was hard to take his surroundings in when he could only see what was directly in front of him, and he was tempted to pull the mask up and scan the room properly. He couldn't tell where her voice was coming from, since it was muffled by the mask.

Not seeing any animatronics, Mike pulled one side of the mask up until it was over his ear. "Marco!" he shouted.

"Polo!" Sunny called back.

Mike dropped the mask and headed to the stage, where he'd heard her response coming from this time.

Freddy was on the stage. Mike was surprised, because he had never seen Freddy go back onto the stage after it got off. Well, it had been a crazy night. More importantly, Sunny was onstage as well. Freddy was holding onto her in a big bear hug. Its arms were wrapped around her chest just at the base of the ribcage, and because of that her arms were pinned to her side.

She waved with her hand down by her waist. "Hi, guys," she said. She gestured to Porter. "Who's that?"

"The dead guy from the tapes," said Mike. "He's alive, apparently."

Sunny smiled. "Oh, how nice."

"So... is he just hugging you?"

"I think so." Sunny squirmed. "I can't get out."

"That's really weird."

Porter walked towards Freddy.

"Augh!" Sunny suddenly yelped.

Porter stopped. "What is it?"

"He's squeezing me! Really, _really_ hard!"

Porter backed up until he was next to MIke again.

"Okay... he's loosening his grip," said Sunny. "I think he doesn't want you to come over here." She glanced back at Freddy. "I think he's figured out what you are."

"What do they want?" Mike whispered to Porter.

"I don't think they understand our language," replied Porter, "you don't have to whisper."

"It still feels weird to talk in front of them," said Mike.

Mike looked into Freddy's eyes. Slowly, ever so cautiously, he lifted his bear mask until it was above his eyes but still over his head. He could clearly see Freddy's empty, soulless eyes staring off into the distance. They were props; however he observed his environment, the eyes were definitely decorative.

Mike lowered the mask. He took a step up to the stage and stopped. Getting no reaction from Sunny, he took another step, and another.

"I think..." Mike started speaking while he was still formulating the thought. "I think they want me to help them."

"You can help them," said Sunny. "Just get them to let me go and I'll reprogram them."

"No!" Porter cried out. "You can't reprogram them. Others have tried. Guess where they ended up. The only way to end this is to kill them. And after all this time I think I know how to do it."

"Hey, you can't break them! They hold a special place in the hearts of children!"

"I know that, I'm the one who said that!" Porter snapped. "If there were any other way I would do it. You think this place isn't important to me? But it's the only way."

"Maybe it was impossible for those other guys, but I'm, like, a thousand times more awesome than they were. I'm pretty sure I can do it."

"How do you know how much more awesome you are than them if you don't know who they were?"

"I assumed based on the standard distribution of awesome."

"That's not a thing."

"That is _totally_ a thing."

"I'm certain it isn't."

"Back me up here, Mike."

Mike held up his hands. "Sorry. I'm not getting anywhere near this."

"They can't be reprogrammed," said Porter. "It goes so much deeper than that. The only way to end this is for them to be destroyed. Whatever is inside them, it can't hurt anybody if the figures are destroyed."

"And what are you going to do?" asked Sunny. "Burn this restaurant to the ground?"

Porter didn't answer.

"Oh, my g- you _are!_ You are totally going to burn this place to the ground!"

"I can make it look like a kitchen fire," said Porter. "Somebody left the ovens still cooking. Place burns down, figures are destroyed, Fazbears collects some insurance checks to pay off their debts. The place is going under anyway. If we don't, they'll just be sold at an auction. Can you imagine what might happen if a private collector gets his hands on one of these things?"

"No!" Sunny struggled against Freddy's grip. "I won't let you. This is _my_ job!"

"It's mine, too. I was supposed to be the guard... I was supposed to keep those kids safe."

Mike twisted his head sideways. "You saw him, too?"

"Yeah. A lot of times. I never knew he was up to anything. And he never left with any kids that weren't his own, and he sure didn't kill them on the property, so there was nothing I could have done. Just like there's nothing you could have done. But now there _is_ something we can do, Mike."

"Yes! We can fix them!" Sunny squawked

"We have to burn them."

"Fix!"

"Burn."

"Enough!" Mike tore his mask off and threw it to the ground. Freddy looked at him. Mike tensed.

When nothing moved, he took several long steps up to the stage. Sunny didn't say anything, so Mike figured Freddy didn't mind him approaching. "Freddy Fazbear. Have you been trying to get my help this whole time?"

Of course, the bear didn't say anything. Mike continued: "You wanted me to meet Sunny. You wanted me to know somebody was trying to hurt you. You wanted me to see my friend was alive. You want Sunny's help. I don't know how much you understand, but you understand _something_ is going on, and you need me. You need _her_. You're not trying to kill me. You were never trying to kill me. You were trying to kill _him!_ " He pointed aggressively at Porter as he finished, his voice rising to a yell.

"He wants to-to kill all of us!" Porter was beginning to stammer again. His voice was loud, but somehow still wasn't angry or forceful. "They _were_ trying to kill you then!"

Mike spread his arms out. "Look at me! I'm not wearing a costume. I'm not behind a steel door. They're all looking at me! It's Friday night! If they're trying to kill me, why not now?" He looked at Freddy. "But you're not going to kill me, are you?"

Freddy didn't respond.

"Porter, I'm going to help them," said Mike.

Porter was silent for a long time. Then he sagged. "Do what you think is right," he said, defeated. Porter shuffled away into the darkness.

Mike then hopped up onto the stage next to Freddy and Sunny. "Let her go," said Mike. He put one hand on Sunny and one on Freddy and gently pushed them apart. Freddy released his grip.

Sunny smiled. "Let's get cracking."

It took a moment for Sunny to find Freddy's shutoff mechanism. It was well hidden, impossible for a child to accidentally hit (or a security guard to locate in a moment of panic, Mike noticed with some resentment.) Then she and Mike moved it into a lying position. After that she brought out her PowerBook and a cable, which she used to hook Freddy up to it. "It's really very simple," she said as an enormous wall of code appeared on her screen. "I just need to change this night code so they can recognize a human in low lighting, as per this 3D rendering. No more bare endoskeleton problems."

"That's not really all there is to it?"

"There's a little more."

"It really was just an image problem? Then... then why didn't they stuff me into a suit?"

"You said it yourself. They understand they need your help."

"But when I said that I thought-"

"Robots don't think like you and me," said Sunny. "You're thinking about this logically from the sidelines. They see a series of conflicting events."

"So... how _do_ they know you're here to help them?"

Sunny reached into Freddy's eye and pulled out a small computer chip. "This little baby right here. I put it in all of them to extract information wirelessly on Monday. It also has some of my information on it."

"That's what you were doing when we met!"

"Yeah. I guess they read my information and realized what I was. And figured out what you were from that, and from seeing me."

Mike shook his head. "This is crazy. So now they're safe for everyone?"

"Freddy is," said Sunny. "Not the others yet, but that'll be a breeze. Hey, do you smell pizza?"

"Not anymore," said Mike, "but when I first came here it smelled like pizza to me all the time."

"Huh. Anyway." She unhooked Freddy from her PowerBook, and they lifted it back up to its feet. "Awaken, Freddy!" She switched him on. Right away, Freddy's face began to glow as it played its favorite song, the Toreador March.

Mike felt faint and he flopped back into a chair. Freddy, however, held its arm out and waved to Mike with a big, creepy bear smile.

"Let's see if he works for everyone. Porter! Hey, Porter, get your butt over here!"

They looked around, but Porter was nowhere to be seen.

"Ah, he'll come around," said Sunny. "He's just sore because his ghost theory didn't pan out."

"I'm still not entirely sure they're not haunted."

"They aren't."

"Are you sure?"

"Totally. I programmed out the ghosts."

Mike blinked. "Can you.. can you do that?"

"Check the eyes."

Mike got up on his toes and peered into the empty space around Freddy's eyes. "No mucus."

"No mucus."

"I don't think you can program out ghosts."

"Are you an engineering student?"

"No, but-"

"Look, either I programmed out the ghosts and they knew we would do it for them, or I taught them to recognize humans at night starting with you and me. Whichever explanation works better for you, that's the one you can live with." She sniffed the air. "Now I really smell pizza... and smoke."

"Yeah, now that you mention it, I do, too."

"Hang on." Sunny walked across the dining room and reached out to open the kitchen door.

It flew open in front of her and Porter, now only wearing the Golden Freddy mask, walked out quickly. "I wouldn't go in there if I were you," he said in his friendly voice. It sounded very creepy.

"Why? What's in there?" She opened the door a crack, and then let it swing closed. "You did it."

"He did what?"

Sunny opened the door. The entire kitchen was ablaze. "I can't believe you!"

"You did it your way. I did it mine."

"But your way is _arson!_ My way works just fine and isn't illegal!"

"Look I suggest we get out of here before the fire spreads too far. After we round up the animatronics into the kitchen. Then Mike can call the fire department, since he's the security guard, and our problems are solved."

"You ass!" Sunny threw a punch at Porter, which he blocked. She flung her other hand out and clawed at his face. He slammed her into the door, but not before she swatted her hand at him hard, knocking his mask up.

For a second, it could have gone either way: backwards onto the ground, or forwards onto his head. But it chose backwards. It landed on the ground by the door frame, blocking the door from swinging shut.

Foxy was peering out the curtains of Pirate Cove. The second it saw Porter, it screamed and ran across the room at him.

Sunny instinctively jumped between Porter and Foxy, just as she had done to save Mike from Chica. Foxy, however, shoved her aside. She went tumbling over the nearest table and her head hit the thin, cement-like carpet with a loud crack. Foxy began dragging Porter towards the backstage area.

Mike ran after them. He wasn't sure if Foxy would recognize him as a friend as Freddy just had, but he had to trust that he was safe. He grabbed the robot fox by the shorts, but that didn't even register for it, and it kept walking, pulling itself free from Mike's grip without even trying.

When Foxy got to the backstage door, Freddy stepped in Foxy's path. Foxy pressed itself into Freddy, almost as if it was trying to ghost through, but couldn't because that's not how solid matter works. Freddy pushed Foxy to the side, and Foxy lost its grip on Porter. Then Freddy stood between Foxy and Porter. Foxy, not being able to see the intruder now, went back to Pirate Cove.

"See? See that?" Sunny was standing up now, hand on her head. "He's nice now!"

Porter got to his feet, shaking. "You did it," he said. "You... actually did it?"

Mike glanced over his shoulder. "Okay, but also the fire."

"Right," said Sunny. "The fire." She turned to see that the fire had spread out of the kitchen by way of the carpet, because the door was still open thanks to the rapidly burning golden Freddy head. The front door was blocked by the path of flames.

"The fire door," said Porter. "It's near the security room." He turned and jogged down the hall. Mike and Freddy followed him. Sunny made a pit stop at the stage to snag her computer before following them. Porter pushed the emergency door open and the fire alarm went off.

"Sprinklers?" suggested Sunny.

"What do _you_ think!" Mike shot back.

Porter and Sunny left at once. Mike held the door open. "Go on, Freddy. Get out."

Freddy didn't move.

"They can't leave the building, Mike," said Porter. "They aren't programmed for outside. They have a map of the place in their brains and those are the only places they can go."

"Great." Mike shoved Freddy from behind and the robot stumbled forward past the threshold. "Now the others."

"Mike, if you bring the other ones out, they're going to put everybody who comes near them in danger. Just because they don't know where they are doesn't mean they won't kill."

"But I could finally _do_ something," said Mike. "Don't take that away from me!"

"You can't save them all, Mike," said Porter.

"Can't, can't, can't!" Mike even stomped his foot like a petulant child. "I can't save the kids, I can't save my friend. You keep telling me it's okay that I can't. Both of you. Because I didn't know, because I wasn't there. Well, what's my excuse now? I'm here! I know!"

"You've survived this long. Don't throw it away over this!"

Mike squeezed his eyes shut. Save them, help them, save him. You can't. "I _can_." He opened his eyes. "I mean, I won't. I'll save them all."

Mike turned around and ran back inside. The smoke was thick, so he kept as low as he could, bent nearly in half as he walked. He was, once again, in luck. Bonnie and Chica were both in the dining room now, and Foxy was peeking out from the curtains.

"Hey! Chica! Bonnie! Foxy!" Mike spread his arms out as wide as possible. "It's ME!"

One of them screamed. Then another, and the third. Mike ran back down the hall as fast as he could, with the animatronics on his tail. The smoke burned his eyes and he tried not to inhale, but his heart was pounding in his chest. Worse than when he was in the supply closet. He was feeling light-headed from the smoke and the lack of air.

Sunny was holding the door open. "Come on!" she cried. "You can do it."

Mike reached his hand out to grab her, have her help him out, but he stumbled and fell. Mike hit the ground a good three feet from the door, and his vision was fuzzy.

Bonnie lunged at Mike, teeth gnashing. Sunny screamed.

Mike closed his eyes. "After all this..." he whispered.

In the distance, louder than normal, the Westminster chimes sounded.

Mike opened his eyes. Bonnie was frozen in place, just in front of him. Chica and Foxy were right behind it, crowding the rabbot.

For a moment, Mike, Sunny, and Porter just stared at Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. Nobody moved.

Breaking the trance, Sunny grabbed Bonnie and pulled it past the door. It didn't react. Mike got to his feet, shaking, and grabbed Chica. Porter shrugged in defeat and grabbed Foxy. Slowly, he led the stunned robot outside into the very faint morning light.

"You know," Porter said slowly, "Foxy always was my favorite."

There were sirens in the distance. "Sunny, work fast," said Mike. "I don't know what's gonna happen."

"Aye aye," she said with one quick nod. Then she dropped to her knees as Porter lowered Foxy down for her to work on.

Mike swayed on the spot. Then he dropped to his knees as well, before falling on the ground and passing out.


	7. Good Ending

It was the dawn of a new week.

Mondays are normally dreary, hateful days for the working world. But for Mike Schmidt, Mondays were the best day of the working week. On Mondays, the animatronics at Freddy Fazbear's were quiet and mostly inactive. But every now and then, something moved.

This Monday, Sunny dropped in to visit Mike at around one. Mike was sitting at his desk, hunched over the security camera when Sunny waltzed in. "Morning, Mike," she said.

"You're up late." Mike didn't take his eyes away from the security camera.

"My plane's leaving at six," said Sunny. "I took a nap this afternoon but I'm really just going to stay up instead of trying to get up."

"Back to Tango City, I presume?"

"Yup. Gotta do my quarterly tune-up on the Rock 'n' Rollers at Pizzaland. I hear Rita Shrew is getting a little logey."

Mike stretched. "Well, if you're ever in the area..."

"I'll look you up," finished Sunny. "I might come back in a few months to tune up these guys, make sure they aren't oozing blood. If you're up for it, maybe... we could go out for a slice of pizza?"

"Maybe not pizza," said Mike. "But look me up."

"Nice." She sat down on the desk. "So."

"So?"

"So. Their grand re-opening went quietly. What's changed? Besides the less haunted animatronics with upgraded servos that allow for smoother and more fluid movement?"

"The kitchen is new."

"Well, natch." She glanced out the window. "Speaking of... when the fire trucks and the cops came..."

"I was passed out, remember?"

"Well, yeah, but after..." she cleared her throat. "Did you tell them what happened?"

"No. I didn't."

"Me neither."

The silence hung in the air like a tapestry.

"Do you think it's the right thing to do?"

"I don't know. But I'm not going to betray my friend."

Sunny smiled. "Golly, Mike. A girl could really fall for a guy like you."

"Don't you dare."

"Are you still friends?"

Mike nodded. "We are. He's coming back to work for the company for a little longer, now that the job's less... well, deadly. I think that the management is figuring out they don't need night guards anymore, so I probably won't be on this shift much longer."

"What else is different?"

Mike put the camera down. "Well... the power still runs out. They aren't making _that_ much more money... although word of the bot's new show is getting around. You did a good job. Where did you get the tapes?"

"Offsite storage. Do they notice how much smoother their movements are now? I really want someone to notice."

"I think they don't care about that. The parents just got sick of hearing 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Pizza.'"

"Aw, but that was Freddy's best number!" She laughed. "Do they try to get into the office still?"

"Well, yeah," said Mike. He reached over and hit the door light on the right. Outside, Chica leered in.

Sunny jumped. "She still looks creepy as sin,"

"Yeah," agreed Mike.

Chica walked into the office, its hands out. It was holding a pink iced cupcake. Mike took it. "Thank you, Chica," he said.

Chica stared at them with its jaw slack for a long, uncomfortable stretch. Then it turned around and left.

"I have no idea where she's getting these," said Mike. "But they're stale. Want one?"

"Sure." Sunny took the cupcake and bit into it. "Mmm. Stale."

"So, how long are you staying?"

Sunny swallowed. "I actually have to go," she said. "I have loose ends to wrap up, and I have to be at the airport early..."

"Wait." Mike stood up. "Before you go, I just want to make sure that I thanked you."

"Thanked me for what?"

"For teaching me to believe in myself," said Mike. "I didn't know I could, before you showed up."

"Oh. Uh... you're welcome?"

Mike hugged her. Sunny hesitated only a moment before hugging him back. She smelled like strawberries.

"Goodbye, Mike. See you in June."

Sunny left, and Mike was alone. He sat quietly for a few minutes, and then picked up the camera. Foxy was peeking out from Pirate Cove. The 'Out of Order' sign had recently been removed and replaced with a 'Press for Show' button. For a second, Mike thought that the button was labeled something else, something far more sinister...

... but he fixed his eyes on it until he was sure that all it said was what it said.

All was well.

* * *

 _The last week at Freddy's, in case you wondered why he was still working here, was metaphorical._

 _This story went through about a billion re-writes since March, most of them before publication, but at the last minute I realized what I had was too stupid to publish. So if you think this ending was dumb, just know that the one that came before it makes this one look like Steinbeck._ _I went through a lot of different ideas, like Mike being the killer trying to atone for his deeds (he and Purple Guy were involved in a kidnapping scheme gone wrong) Phone Guy didn't initially turn out alive, the place went from actually burning down to re-opening anew every other week. Hell, I think at one point Sunny was the killer. It sounds like something she'd do. In it's first incarnation, it all took place over one night with just Mike and Sunny, a sort of Waiting for Godot kind of thing, but I ended up needing Freddy to almost get them before the power ran out to get her to believe him, and it naturally spread into a game cycle. The document is still called "The Last Night at Freddy's," I never bothered to change it._

 _Keep your eyes peeled on my profile for future information about "Sunny Nights at Pizzaland" if you're interested. Remember when she said she revitalized a struggling pizza restaurant? That's what it's about. Also, it's less 5NaF and more Showbiz Pizza around Concept Unification, and it's not horror in the least. But if you like Sunny and you like non-haunted pizza emporiums after dark, it'll be the book for you._


End file.
